Unabomber Loses Bid For New Trial

But One Judge Adamantly Defended Ted Kaczynski's Right To Defend Himself.

August 18, 2001|By Eric Malnic, National Correspondent

Convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski lost his appeals Friday for rehearings, although one judge wrote a stinging dissent that a federal court had treated Kaczynski as less than human.

It was the second time this year that Kaczynski has failed to win a new trial. He may now take his appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Unabomber was arrested in 1996 at his remote cabin in Montana, ending the longest and costliest manhunt in this nation's history. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to an almost 20-year bombing rampage that killed three people and injured 23 more.

But in the months that followed, Kaczynski filed an appeal, arguing that federal Judge Garland Burell had violated his rights by denying his request to represent himself and by allowing his lawyers, over his objections, to use his mental condition as a defense.

In February, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the Unabomber's bid for a new trial.

Judges Pamela Ann Rymer and Melvin Brunetti voted against a new trial, but Judge Stephen Reinhardt argued that the defendant's right to represent himself had been violated.

Kaczynski then filed another appeal, asking for a rehearing before the three-judge panel and before an 11-judge panel from the entire 9th Circuit Court. On Friday, the three-judge panel turned him down again. A majority of the 22 judges of the circuit court also turned down his bid for a rehearing by an 11-judge panel.

But one of those circuit judges, Alex Kozinski, issued a strongly worded dissent. "Kaczynski's excellent lawyers misled him about the strategy they would pursue in his defense," the judge said.

"Over his strenuous objections that he did not want to be portrayed as a nut, they prepared a case that would do precisely that. . . . Weird and misguided though his ideas may be, Kacyznski is entitled to insist that he win or lose on the merits, rather than present to the jury what he considers to be a lie."

To deny him that, the judge wrote, "may soothe our collective consciences. But it treats Kaczynski as something less than a full, adult, sane human being."